Maybe NERC tested 9/9/99 to draw attention to the NON EVENT!

There has been a lot of discussion as to why the big "test"
of the Electrical Utilities was scheadualed for today. The
thought just ran through my mind, If I wanted to draw as
much attention to a "drill" that I knew I was going to pass
then when would I scheadual it? Why on a date that was already
going to get a lot of media hype!

If the outcome of the NERC test is a slam dunk this will get
the maximum SPIN effect to quite the heard. And if there
is anything that America seems to excel at in todays world
it is in the art of SPIN CONTROL. If they though that there
was even a slight chance of failure they would not have picked
this date. (It would have been done on a Sat nite at midnite!)

Of course they knew exactly what they were doing. They all knew that
the likelihood of a 9999 event was slim to none, and that they could
use the media to portray this as similar to what will happen for Y2K.

What a joke! Anyone who can't see the difference is deluding
themselves.

On top of that, businesses in particular found this an ideal day to
run their new Y2K software fixes because if anything did crash they
would say: "well that was caused by the 9999 and you won't have to
worry about that for another 100 years - go back to work".

Still, even if some office bookkeeping systems, etc. passed their
"tests" the most devastating aspect of Y2K still remains largely
unchallenged - VERY FEW ORGANIZATIONS ARE CONFRONTING THE ISSUE OF
EMBEDDED SYSTEMS, AND THEY ARE CERTAINLY NOT TESTING THEM. The real
test is Jan. 1 because they think it is better to "fix on failure".

I first heard about this "programming" method from Eddie Yourgod. In
all my years of programming, not once did this eof thing come up.
First you complain that the media isn't paying attention, now you say
they are paying too much attention; make up your mind.

Since Eddie made such a big deal about this date, the gov and
corporate america decided to use it not to test the equipment but
more to test the contingency planning. Don't worry we won't blame
you if things run smoothly. We knew that they would anyway. And we
didn't plan to throw this smoothly running event back into your face
(you already have too much egg on it anyway). You guys are getting
way too paranoid.